5 minute read
I have been reading Adam Grant’s new book, Vibe, and one idea has stayed with me all week. Connection is not built in grand gestures. It is built in the small choices we make how we speak to people, how we read them and how we respond when things get hard.
As leaders, we communicate all day long. Emails, briefings, corridor conversations, the message at 9pm that we tell ourselves can’t wait until morning. Every one of those moments either builds connection or wears it down. There is no neutral.
Grant busts three myths that every school leader needs to hear.
- You don’t need to be alike to connect.
- Chemistry can be slow.
- Closeness can be quick.
In other words, the relationships we think are fixed rarely are. So here are five habits I keep coming back to that I find helpful to remind myself about.
Use your voice
We reach for email because it feels safer, yet research by Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley found that people feel more connected when they hear someone’s voice than when they read their words, and calls are no more awkward than text, whatever we might predict. Text carries information but a voice carries the person and the tone.
I am not suggesting we abolish email. But sometimes the thank you, the worry you need to express, or the difficult conversation deserve your voice. A voice note can carry warmth when a call feels like too much. When the news is hard, a phone call lets your tone do the work that text sometimes can’t do.
Check your story
Chris Argyris and Peter Senge’s Ladder of Inference is one of the most useful tools I know. It explains how we can see something small, add meaning, make assumptions, reach a conclusion and act on it, often in seconds. Sometimes we have jumped to quite the wrong conclusion and then, worse, act on it.
Perhaps an employee leaves your meeting without a word. By the time they reach the car park, you have decided they don’t back the plan and aren’t a team player. In reality, they had just taken a call about their poorly child. We didn’t stop to get curious; we just ran up the inference ladder and made things worse.
The danger is that our beliefs then decide what we notice next time. So before you act, ask yourself one question: what did I actually see or hear?
See the best
Sandra Murray’s 1996 studies turned traditional relationship advice on its head. Her research found that the happiest couples see each other more generously than their friends do. They link flaws to strengths: he’s stubborn, but that’s why he never gives up. In other words, they see their partner’s flaws but re-frame them.
This isn’t just for romantic relationships though. The best teams do this too. The colleague who is over-detailed is the reason nothing slips. The one who is blunt is the one who tells you the truth. Being generous does not mean we are blind, or deluded, we still need to name the behaviours that need to change. But when we hold a high opinion of someone, their flaws stop looming so large. In turn, we see them positively even in their weaknesses. People can feel it when we do this.
Welcome the feeling
Developmental psychologist Dr Aliza Pressman has a phrase I love: all feelings are welcome, all behaviours are not. She wrote it for parents, but it is for leadership too.
People will feel frustrated by a restructure, anxious before an inspection, hurt by a decision. Those feelings are allowed. It is what we do with them that matters.
The words we choose make all the difference. “What’s wrong with you?” shuts people down. “I understand why that affected you so much” opens them up. Research from Ohio State shows validation protects people’s mood, while invalidation escalates emotion. Validating isn’t agreeing. It is simply saying: you make sense. When people feel we understand, or are trying to, we can better problem-solve together.
Be consistent
This one stopped me in my tracks because it isn’t what I have always believed. Julianne Holt-Lunstad found that our blood pressure rises more around people we feel mixed about than around people we simply dislike. With difficult people, we know what we are getting. With mixed people, we stay on alert, because we don’t.
Think about what that means for leadership. Some leaders sound like a Craig David song: warm on Monday, cutting on Thursday, enthusiastic on a Friday. This inconsistency is more exhausting for your team than being steady and demanding. Consistency is a form of kindness. Do your staff know which version of you will turn up? If they don’t, they will be wasting precious energy on trying to work it out.
Our challenge this week
Use your voice. Check your story. See the best. Welcome the feeling. Be consistent.
None of these cost money. All of them take intention. So here is my challenge: pick one this week. Just one. Swap one email for a call. Pause before you climb the ladder. Name the strength in the colleague who frustrates you.
Then take it to your next senior team meeting and ask everyone to pick one too. Culture is not what we write in our vision statements. It is what people feel when they walk away from a conversation with us.
Stronger leaders, stronger schools. It starts with how we speak to each other.
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